Status
Conditions
Treatments
About
This study is designed to see if doing regular training on a spatial imagery task leads to improvements in the ability to do the trained spatial imagery task and in the ability to get around in everyday activities.
Full description
The investigators will recruit 40 blind participants, randomized by the investigators' CVNR statistician into two groups. One group will undergo the experimental intervention (spatial cognitive training) and the other will undergo a control intervention involving letter-number matching. The participants will include women and minorities in proportion to the demographics of the Veteran population attending the Atlanta VA.
Enrollment
Sex
Ages
Volunteers
Inclusion criteria
Inability to perceive visual stimuli, i.e. no light perception, with stable visual loss over the past year
The investigators anticipate that causes of blindness will be ocular, including:
To minimize heterogeneity due to variations in age and the duration of visual loss, the investigators will restrict enrollment to Veterans and Non-Veterans over the age of 50 who lost light perception within the last 5 years, and who have completed standard O&M training.
From a practical standpoint, this also enables the investigators to focus on participants who can potentially benefit most from the proposed intervention.
Exclusion criteria
Participants will be excluded if they have any neurological condition, such as:
Participants will also be excluded if MRI scanning is contra-indicated, e.g.:
Cognitive screening will be performed using the Repeatable Battery for Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS, Randolph, 1998) and participants with cognitive impairment will be excluded based on a score of 1.5 SD below the mean for the Verbal Memory Index.
The investigators will test participants' hearing using a validated screening questionnaire (Screening Version of the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly, HHIE-S, Wentry & Weinstein, 1983, Lichtenstein et al., 1988) followed by assessment of audiometric pure tone (0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0 KHz) hearing thresholds in the CVNR sound booth.
Participants with more than mild hearing loss (HHIE score >8 or audiometric thresholds >40dB) will be excluded (Wentry & Weinstein, 1983; Wilson, 2009), given that the investigators are relying on audio cues.
The investigators will also exclude visually impaired Veterans who are dependent on a wheelchair or scooter for mobility, as they will not be able to take part in the real-world task.
Primary purpose
Allocation
Interventional model
Masking
6 participants in 2 patient groups
Loading...
Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov
Clinical trials
Research sites
Resources
Legal